Why Not Philadelphia? By Thom Nickels, For The Bulletin 11/16/2008 Many questions have been asked about the proposed American Commerce Cen...

Saturday, February 18, 2017

THE LOCAL LENS

THOM NICKELS FAREWELL, FIORELLA NICKELS

The death of a loved one or family member is
for most people a traumatic experience. That’s because most of us assume that our
lives will go on for a long time and that death won’t happen today or even the
day after tomorrow but sometime in the distant future.

Death is never a
pleasant topic. There are no “nice” deaths, either. One can die instantly of a
heart attack, stroke or in an automobile accident, or one can die slowly over a
period of months or years. In the case of the latter, at least there’s a chance
for the one who is about to die to say good-bye. In the case of the former,
there are no such options. In the Orthodox Church there are prayers asking God
to save us from an instant death. It is always better to be prepared for this
important transition from life to after life.

My sister in law
recently reposed. We were not extremely close but we still had a closeness made
palpable by decades of family dinners and reunions. When I say we were not
extremely close I don’t mean to imply a distance caused by alienation. Like
most people, we were caught up in our own lives which led us to assume that
there would be plenty of time to see one another again.

Fioerlla came into my brother’s life at a
point when he really needed change and a life partner. One day my mother called
me up and said, “You’ll be meeting Fiorella this Sunday. I think your brother
has met his match.”

Fiorella had long straight
hair, a winning smile, a keen intelligence and an acute sense of humor. Her
Italian family roots could be traced to the area by the Adriatic Sea.
She was born in Italy
but migrated to the United States
as a toddler with her parents. She married my brother in Saint Patrick’s church
in Malvern, an old gothic structure with enormous glass stained windows. I attended
the wedding. It was the 1970s and all the men in the wedding party had long
hair and mustaches. The reception was a rollicking party along the lines of Saturday Night Fever.

Fiorella’s mother was a gifted seer who
provided her daughter with advice and counseling. Her father had a talent for
winemaking; his wine was famous for its smooth medicinal properties and it
rarely if ever caused a morning hangover. We all asked one another, “how does
he make this stuff?’

My brother often spoke of his mother-in-law’s
intuitive talents. Like the mystic and saint, Padre Pio, it was claimed that
Fiorella’s mother could be in two places at once. This is called bi-location.
My brother once told me that his father-in-law would often see his wife in the
garden and then half a second later at the kitchen stove. It was just one of life’s
unexplained mysteries. Still, Fiorella’s mom’s excellent “intuitions” were
sometimes not what her daughter or my brother wanted to hear.

I remember the time when she warned them to
travel by plane rather than take the train when planning a cross country trip. The
advice seemed backwards because conventional wisdom suggests that flying would
be more dangerous than traveling by Amtrak. Fiorella was afraid of flying and
she tried to avoid it whenever possible, so it took all her strength to muster
up the courage to fly with my brother when they embarked on their honeymoon to Acapulco.

But Fiorella’s mother was persistent: “Do not
take the train! Take the plane!”

Fiorella’s fear of flying was just too great, so
she and my brother decided to take the train, despite the warning. Once on board
Amtrak in the train’s sleeping compartment, there was a crash and a sort of
explosion that sent the two of them flying off their bunks. Smoke entered their
compartment and a lot of panic ensued. Fortunately they escaped without injury:
the train had derailed or had crashed into something, I’m not sure which, but
those uncertain moments were very scary for them.

Fiorella and my
brother settled in a house in a development in Exton,
Pennsylvania where they raised three children. The years
advanced and as often happens with families there were times when we Nickels
siblings would drift apart only to come together during the holidays or a 4th
of July picnic. On one 4th of July Fiorella and my brother hosted a
massive reunion for my mother’s side of the family. The ‘Muldoon-Kelly’ reunion
covered the waterfront in terms of disparate personalities and incomes.
Fiorella and my brother had also managed to obtain old photos of distant
relatives in Tyrone County, Ireland, men with long black beards covering their
chest and women carrying parasols.

Fiorella contracted
breast cancer a few years ago. She had a single mastectomy and routine chemo
and radiation treatments. After that she and my brother went on an extreme
health regime. Life was fine for a while but then two or three days after
Christmas it was discovered that the cancer had returned, only now it was in
her liver.

In no time at all
it seemed the cancer got worse and spread to other parts of Fiorella’s body. She
was admitted to BrynMawrHospital. When the truth of her
incurable cancer became an undisputable fact, her youngest daughter, Amanda
came up with a plan.

Scheduled to be
married to her fiancé Mark in September 2017, the couple organized a wedding in
the hospital chapel before their big September church wedding. All of my
brother’s children pitched in to create what became a miniature but full extravanza
in just 24 hours. That included getting the wedding rings, hiring musicians, a
priest, ordering food and champagne and negotiating with a tailor to alter
Fiorella’s old wedding gown for Amanda to wear.

Fiorella was
informed of the impromptu chapel wedding and was given an extra treatment of
radiation so she could attend. The morning of the wedding she woke up and said,
“I feel great!”

The small ceremony
turned the hospital upside down when nurses and physicians, and even the
hospital’s president and CEO, crowded into the small chapel, many of them in
tear.

My last visit with Fiorella was Tuesday January
31 when I entered her hospital room around 5:20
PM. She was alone and she looked to be sleeping. The room was empty
except for the sounds of a nurse running water in the bathroom. When the nurse
asked me who I was, I told her that I was a brother in law. In the few seconds
that it took me to say this I thought I saw a smile cross Fiorella's face. Was
I imaging this? My brother had told me earlier that his wife was comatose but
that she could hear what was being said. The nurse said I could spend as much
time with her as I wanted, and so I sat with Fiorella until the chaplain walked
in and told me that Fiorella had actually died hours before, at 3:20.

Hearing this was
disconcerting because all along I had thought that she was asleep. I spent 30
minutes sitting with Fiorella, meditating, thinking of times past.

Then I thought of the
words of St. John Chryosotom who wrote that although death is terrible and
frightening—yes, even its name is devastating-- that for those who know the
higher philosophy there should be no shuddering,

That’s because death is merely a passing over
when we leave this corruptible life and go on to another, which is unending and
incomparably better.

Followers

About Me

I am a Philadelphia-based author/journalist, the author of nine published books, including: The Cliffs of Aries (1988), Two Novellas: Walking Water & After All This (1989), The Boy on the Bicycle (1991-1994), Manayunk (1997), Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia (2000), Tropic of Libra (2002), Out in History and Philadelphia Architecture (2005)and SPORE (2010). In 1990, Two Novellas was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and a Hugo Award. Winner of the 2005 Philadelphia AIA Lewis Mumford Two Novellas rewritten and retitled for Starbooks Press: Walking on Water & After All This, available as an e-book. Winner of the Philadelphia AIA 2005 Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. I am currently the City Beat editor at ICON Magazine, a contributing editor/writer at The Weekly Press, and a weekly columnist (The Local Lens) for Philadelphia’s SPIRIT Community Newspapers. I am the Religion Editor for the Lambda Book Report, and have written for Philadelphia's Broad Street Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.
www.tnickels.net